Children of Paradise: A Novel (37 page)

He decides to place the spider on her shoulder and reminds this young prefect to keep her head still and trust him. She nods and offers her hand again by holding the hand with the other to keep it from shaking, but the preacher says his choice of her shoulder is better than a shaky hand and all she needs to do is obey him. He holds the tarantula in a pincer grip between his thumb and index finger and lowers it onto her left shoulder. For a few seconds she closes her eyes and holds her breath and sways a little and the spider moves from her left shoulder toward her face with these slow legs picking up and touching down lightly like fingertips on piano keys and perhaps the prefect feels something from the movement through her dress that makes her forget that the material sits between her skin and the tarantula, maybe the hairy feet feel just as if the tarantula crawls on her skin. She strains her neck upward and toward her right shoulder and into tense cords to keep the creature in view of her wide disbelieving eyes and to increase the distance between its prying, hairy legs and her face. As she leans, she tries her best to remain still and model obedience to the reverend. She sees the tarantula grow in her sight as the only thing present in the congregation, and from its becoming giant in size with its many legs on her skin, she thinks that somehow it succeeds in dividing itself into two and then four spiders and at any moment they will crawl all over her body.

She springs from her position of frozen consent and cooperation and beats her neck and shoulders with her hands and brushes hard and rapidly to clear away as many spiders as the feel of those legs on her skin. She bolts off the stage and the guards try to hold her but she pokes them in their faces with her wild arms and slips from their grasp and they follow her out of the tent and into the dark as she screams and hops and waves her arms around to fend off many nightmare tarantulas. The real arachnid sheepishly crawls along the stage where she knocked it off her, and the preacher retrieves it and places it back in the box.

The guards chase the girl but not the way an adult pursues someone in an emergency; theirs is a casual pursuit, more a case of follow that girl’s scream and her noisy progress from the tent toward the gorilla’s cage. A few lights dot the commune and make it possible to see the prefect’s shadow sprint into the circumference of a lit area and then out of it and back into the dark. They wonder where she thinks she is going at this late hour. Rather than heading for the children’s dormitories, she sprints toward the field to the right of the gorilla’s cage. A pothole might break her ankle or a viper bite her foot. Prefect, young lady, hello, where are you, the guards call into the darkness. They run faster now because the field is no place for a child at night and she needs to be rescued from herself.

Adam runs at the bars of his cage and throws his body against them. He jumps on the spot and shakes the cage and howls. The guards beat the bars of the cage with their sticks to silence Adam. He retreats out of sight. The guards discuss the girl’s disappearance:

—She knows what’s in that field.

—Headed straight for it.

And the words barely leave their mouths before they say blouse and skirts and pick up the pace, followed by the rest of the group. They hear the girl’s scream cut short with an echo, not in the air, as before, but from under their feet, up from the ground, and they collide with the well and shine their torches into it, but the well is so deep it swallows the rays.

The guards fetch more lights to shine into the well. One or two still call: Prefect, young lady, hello, and point their torches at the forest, hoping she might emerge from it. A guard returns to the tent and whispers something to Nora. She orders the guard to pull himself together, but she has to do the same. Nora, Dee, and Pat confer and decide to allow the reverend to finish his preaching before they inform him. But he turns from the middle of his tirade against the enemies of the commune to ask where the girl is and why a bunch of grown men cannot catch a teenager and must he do everything himself. He sees the glum expressions of his assistants and pauses and asks his congregation to excuse him for a moment. He walks to Nora, Dee, and Pat and asks them to tell him what all the chaos is about if they care one iota about him. They tell him that the prefect who ran from the tent did a stupid thing.

—What stupid thing would that be?

The nurse says the young woman ran and jumped into the well. The preacher spins away from his assistant and slaps his forehead with his open hand. He barks into the microphone:

—No, no, no, no, no. Do not go before me, wait for me. I want you all to repeat. Do not go before me, wait for me. Repeat.

—Do not go before me, wait for me.

He falls quiet. He covers his face, and his shoulders shake as he sobs. He wipes his face with a handkerchief fished from his back pocket, tucks the kerchief back in place, straightens and breathes and exhales into the microphone.

—Forgive me. Even I’m overcome sometimes. People, do not fear this world or anything in it. Believe me, you have the kingdom of heaven, and this world’s nothing to you. Don’t fear a scorpion or spider or snake. These things can’t harm your everlasting spirit. Believe me. The young woman did not understand. Parents, make your children understand, please. The child ran from here in her fear and confusion. She ran from me and the safety that we all provide to each other in our unity. She ran from us and into the night. They tell me she jumped into the well.

Shouts ring out, no, no, and screams from the young woman’s parents, her immediate circle of friends, and pockets of the audience. The prefect’s parents clutch each other and crumple in their seats and beg the preacher to say it is not so, that their little girl is all right. But he shakes his head and says he wishes it were otherwise.

—Is this flesh so precious to you that it overrides your faith in the kingdom of heaven? Is this body so much in need of your protection that you would forgo everlasting life? Answer me, people.

—No, Father.

—Our enemies want us in disarray. They want us to commit individual acts of fear and panic and fall apart as a community, but we’re stronger than that. We’ve come a long way, haven’t we? Think of where each of you was before you were saved and how far each of you has come and where you are now, think of that journey of your spirit from ruin and loss and wandering to sure salvation. Do not lose heart at this late stage. Do not mistake the actions of a confused child for defeat. Our spirits, people, cannot be conquered in this world, only our bodies die. Parents, look at me. There is nothing I will not do for you. Look at me.

The parents obey and the preacher takes a knife from his pocket, flicks open the blade, and before Dee, Pat, and Nora or anyone near him can react, he slides the blade across his wrist and holds his arm out for all to see the red slice weep. The prefect’s parents look at the preacher’s face and at his open wrist without releasing their grip of each other. Their faces are wet, their mouths open, and their eyes wide. The preacher pulls out his handkerchief and steps off the stage and Nora grabs the handkerchief and his arm and straps it tightly. He walks to the parents and they fall at his feet and he kisses them.

—You’ve every right to grieve for her and miss her, but don’t feel sorry for her or for yourselves. She’s ahead of you in paradise, and that’s where we’re all heading. Not here in this temporary flesh but with her in eternity. Do you believe?

—Yes, Father.

—Don’t grieve. Let’s lift our voices and sing. We’ll meet your daughter on the other side.

—Yes, Father.

The choir and band strike up the hymn “In the Sweet By-and-By.” The parents hug each other and cry.

As the band, choir, and congregation rage with hallelujahs and praise the Lords and sing at the top of their lungs and throw their arms in the air and some people topple onto the floor and gyrate in paroxysms of bodily transportation, the preacher moves to one corner with his assistants and asks them to confirm that the girl—the stupid little devil of a girl, is how he puts it—really jumped down the well, because he cannot trust those fools who call themselves his bodyguards after their unlikely shaking-bush story. The doctor examines the preacher’s wrist and tells him that although there is no damage to the tendon, he needs stitches, but the preacher says that will have to wait, so the doctor tightens a bandage around the cut. He walks back to the center of the stage with his microphone.

—Trina, Trina, Trina, Trina, Trina. Where are you, my child? Come up here.

Joyce holds on to Trina, who looks at her mother and touches her mother’s arms for Joyce to release her grip. Joyce prays inwardly. God, spare my child.

Trina raises her hand and shouts from the middle of the congregation:

—I’m here, Father.

People steady her and pat her all over as she steps across many legs and picks her way out of her row to continuous applause from the congregation. Trina reaches the stage, transported by these hands touching her and pushing her forward. The preacher leans over and offers his bandaged hand and Trina kisses it and smells his blood and thinks of how blood smells as though the body manufactures vegetation of its own, green leaves, brown bark, tree sap, and she steps up onto the stage. The preacher kisses her on her head.

—Now, children, look at a real demonstration of faith and trust. Trina knows what I mean by the body as a temporary house for the eternal spirit. Don’t you, Trina?

—Yes, Father.

—You know that if I ask you to do something, I make the request as your loving Father who means you no harm and who intends to give his life for your safety, don’t you?

—Yes, Father.

—You hear that, people. Can each of you say that? Without reservation. That you know I mean you no harm; that everything I do is for your well-being?

An array of replies flits around the congregation:

—Yes, Father. We do. We love you. We trust you.

The preacher waits for his followers to quiet and they take their time for each one wants to voice love and loyalty beyond measure, since everyone believes someone watches. Even the stragglers who shout praise feel compelled to stop and allow the preacher to resume his lesson with Trina and discover if the child can produce another miracle.

—Trina, hold out your arms, palms facing upward. Look at me. Don’t take your eyes off me.

—Yes, Father.

Joyce looks around to think what she should do to save Trina. She wants to jump to her feet and scream at the reverend to leave her daughter alone. She wishes she sat closer to an armed guard so she could grab his gun and fire. She feels the arms of the women seated around her, and she looks at their faces and realizes they know what runs through her mind and crawls all over her body, and their touch lets her know that nothing she can think of as a mother will change things for her daughter except a mother’s hope and prayer and surely things will turn out right. The women around Joyce begin the Lord’s Prayer and she joins them. The best she can do for Trina, she decides, requires the most of her, to be strong and keep calm, to remember their plans laid over a long time, sound plans, if they get through this test.

Trina knows what she must do to help herself. She sees herself beside Joyce, hanging clothes in a theater of bodiless shapes. Joyce closes her eyes, unable to look at Trina on the stage with her arms in front of her, palm up, waiting for the preacher to do whatever he plans for her. Trina supplements the hanging of clothes with a walk she takes with her mother through an avenue of big trees with seeds raining down on them and each trying to catch one. Late-afternoon light basks in the tops of the trees. The seeds fall from this high orange-colored harvest.

The preacher asks for two small cardboard boxes, and Nora and Dee step forward, each holding a box. He gives his microphone to Pat, rubs his hands on his trousers, and lifts the lids of the boxes and pulls out a tarantula in one hand and a scorpion in the other. The audience in the rows near the stage leans back. The guards take a step closer to the front rows. The preacher moves swiftly and eases the two writhing creatures onto Trina’s hands, the tarantula in her right and the scorpion in her left. Trina floats away from her body, like one of those seeds departing a tree, and she leaves just a dress, no one inside it and no breeze to enliven it. She locks eyes with the preacher. She follows her mother’s instruction to pick her favorite scenes and keep them in her mind, stay with them, and Trina adds to the theater of clothes on a line and the big trees releasing their produce another picture, of the
Coffee
with the captain at the wheel and her mother next to him and the two of them talking as Trina sketches.

She hardly feels the arachnid and anthropoid’s crawl from her palms to her wrists and over her wrists that she turns to keep the preacher’s pets from falling. They feel their way, one on the left arm and the other on the right, along her warm skin, goose-pimpled but still for them. Trina sees the preacher’s black eyes as pools with nothing in them, just black water, so it is easy for her to see the
Coffee
, the captain, her mother, and her, and she adds the first mate walking to and fro with a rope or a tray and a whistle and winking at her, as is his habit. The creatures reach Trina’s inner elbows about the same time. Her arms are slightly bent and provide a crook for the tarantula and the scorpion to pause and turn around and get the measure of their location. Perhaps her strong pulse there attracts them. And her veins sit up proudly and make the skin there seem thinner than elsewhere. Several people faint, some double over and vomit. Others cover their eyes. Joyce keeps her eyes closed and prays aloud. The preacher holds up his hands for silence and a hush falls on the congregation. In silence the guards attend to those keeled over in their seats or slumped to the floor. The ones who vomited are pulled out of the crowd and offered towels and water. Those who can bear to look crane their necks to get a view of Trina’s outstretched arms. And those at the back who cannot see ask others to tell them what is happening, and the whispered reports, from those who take in the scene on the stage, sound like a secret being divulged in public.